Opinions of Q&A

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

We use Pit Scouting to assess a team's "Cheesecake-ability" factor.

-Mike

We also see it as a great opportunity to get to know a large number of teams. In 2014, we had Q&A with at least 50 of the 100 teams in Newton and came away feeling like we had good interaction with most of the field. Did something similar in 2015. But the key is having a set of specific and insightful questions that can be answered definitively. In 2014 it was measuring how fast a 'bot could inbound the ball. We used a stopwatch to measure demos with 10 reps. Don't know this year's question yet.

[Jared Russell]

Given that there are 9 unique types of defenses a robot may need to traverse this year - and depending on the event, a robot may have between 8 and 12 qual matches - it is likely that you won't witness all robots attempt to traverse all defense types during qualifications.

Determining whether the missing crossings were because a team can't, prefers not to, or just never needed to cross a given defense seems like the kind of question that only pit scouting (both Q&A and inspection of the robot) could answer.

[Lil' Lavery]

Pit scouting is far from perfect, however, it certainly doesn't hurt. If you have the manpower to do it, there's no reason not to pit scout. There's plenty of situations that teams will never find themselves in during qualification matches, and good pit scouting can aid in making educated guesses as to how teams will fare in those situations. Asking "how many points do you score" is not a good pit scouting question. Getting concrete data in terms of design choices is.

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Given that there are 9 unique types of defenses a robot may need to traverse this year - and depending on the event, a robot may have between 8 and 12 qual matches - it is likely that you won't witness all robots attempt to traverse all defense types during qualifications.

Determining whether the missing crossings were because a team can't, prefers not to, or just never needed to cross a given defense seems like the kind of question that only pit scouting (both Q&A and inspection of the robot) could answer.

This x 1000

[Ozuru]

Has pit scouting ever been more useful than watching the robot in play?

[Nuwanda]

My team uses pit scouting as a way to get face to face interaction with every team and get pictures of their robot. We typically don't use their answers for much of anything, but it gives our scouters a chance to become better at interpersonal communication and if we notice teams that are struggling, we send people over to help.